


The Lightning American

by jadebenn



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Pokemon - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, Gen, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2019-09-12
Packaged: 2020-10-17 05:02:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20615426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jadebenn/pseuds/jadebenn
Summary: To Lieutenant Surge, the word ‘strange’ had long since lost any meaning. Strange occurrences were so common that they'd become his new normal. Even so, he wasn't sure he'd ever get completely used to this new life.Not that he really had a choice. His title was all that was left from his old one.





	The Lightning American

Surge sighed as the door shut behind him.

“I’m getting too old for this,” he muttered, as he placed his coat on a hanger.

If he was honest with himself, he really ought to have retired by now. Most of the others had. Not counting the arrest of Giovanni, Lancer had been the first to go, followed by Blaine, Koga, Janine, and Erika. At this point, Brock, Misty, Sabrina, and Blue were the only ones around from the old days, and of that group, he was the oldest.

He barely even noticed himself walk to the fridge and pull out a root beer (no more hard stuff since Sabrina made him promise to go sober). He popped open the bottle and let the fizzy drink run down his throat. Even if it wasn’t _that_ kind of beer, it just felt like the right thing to do on days like these. After getting his fill, he placed down the bottle on the counter and walked over to his study.

The Lightning American. Why had he chosen _that_ to be his title? He could have chosen something sensible, like ‘The Lightning _Lieutenant_.’ At least then he wouldn’t have to answer why he chose it at _every one _of his panels at Pokémon conventions.

“My title is an uncommon word used to describe an inhabitant of Unova,” he’d tell them. “It helps remind me of my roots – who I am and what I represent.”

He chuckled bitterly as he creaked open the door to his study. Some days, he wished he was still _able_ to forget.

The canvas was already set up on the easel. Surge raised an eyebrow. Had Sabrina come by while he was gone? He had given her a key to his new place a week ago – not that it really mattered to someone who could _teleport_ – but he hoped she’d appreciate the gesture, if nothing else. Perhaps she had. Or maybe he was just being forgetful again.

Carefully, he laid the dollops of paint out onto the palette. He closed his eyes and imagined the scene. Some reds and purples would work nicely here. Some grays over there… maybe some black for the shadows on the water. He opened his eyes again and mixed the requisite colors. Yeah, that’d work.

He reached down to a table and grabbed a cup to fill with water, but paused as he felt the weight of it in his hand. He chuckled. Yeah, Sabrina had _definitely_ stopped by while he was out. He placed the water-filled cup back onto the table. He’d need to remember to thank her the next time he saw her. Maybe he’d go ask Erika what kind of gifts she'd recommend. But that was for later. Right now, he needed to get this out of system. So Surge pulled a stool in front of the easel, sat down, and began to paint.

As he started to paint the silhouette of the island, a wave of melancholy washed over him. These were always bittersweet experiences. But he’d accepted them for what they were: part of the healing process.

He’d tried bottling up his feelings. He’d tried forgetting them _with_ the bottle. He’d even tried taking them out through Pokémon battles. It always just made him feel worse.

This way, hard as it was sometimes, was better. Every painting he made was a little bit of proof of what he’d lost. That his struggle was real. That what he _remembered_ was real. Even if no-one but him would recognize it. He needed to get his feelings out there, and the canvas proved a non-judgmental listener.

In what he realized was quickly becoming a theme, it was Sabrina that had suggested he start painting. She’d said pretty much the same thing: that it was unhealthy to bottle up your feelings. They’d either express themselves on _your_ terms, or _their_ terms. It was good advice, though by the way she acted sometimes, he couldn’t help but suspect that she had come about it the hard way.

As he moved his brush, he let the memories flow over him.

The early days were blurry. He’d crawled out of the flaming wreckage of his helicopter a confused and lost man, with little more to his person than his name, some singed MREs, a tattered uniform, and his dog-tags. Slowly, he’d made a life for himself in Kanto. Caught a Pikachu. Learned how to battle. Picked up a few phrases in the language. Scrapped together enough money to rent a room. Caught more Pokémon. Evolved the Pikachu. Battled some more. Got a handle on the language. Bought a small place.

Then, things went downhill. He started to _remember_. That’s when the war, _his_ war, began.

All the things he’d lost. All the people he’d left behind. He’d see flashes of them. Fleeting visions. It drove him insane. He didn’t dare sleep; they’d appear in his nightmares. But then they started showing up during the day too. He was convinced he was losing his mind.

During this time, he’d started collecting gym badges on an ill-thought out attempt on the league. Honestly, he still wasn’t sure how he got far enough along to meet her. The attempt’s sole purpose was distracting himself enough to keep the visions at bay. Brock Senior’s gym should’ve _easily_ done his all-electric team in. Maybe it had, and the old man had just given him a badge out of pity. He’d never been able to get a straight answer out of him, just some angry muttering about sprinklers. Regardless, he somehow made it through the other gyms as well, and found himself facing the leader of the Saffron City gym: Sabrina.

Surge paused for a moment, and looked at the half-completed canvas in front of him. He supposed it was only natural that the two “weirdos” would bond.

He’d lost the gym battle. Horribly. He had no strategy at all other than brute force and a _whole_ lot of healing items, and once the latter was depleted, the former quickly followed. Sabrina had let him exhaust himself against her defenses, and struck after. It was an extremely poor showing. Under normal circumstances, that would’ve been the end of it.

But the (then) newly-minted gym leader had evidently seen something in him. She asked to talk. He did. Soon, they were talking weekly, and then almost daily. At the beginning, he mostly just explained how he felt as Sabrina watched on and occasionally prompted him to continue. After a while, she began to take a more active interest in their conversations, chatting about daily life, and offering him advice. Rarely, she’d vent her own frustrations, many of which revolved around difficulties in her own life. It wasn’t what he’d expected, but it was welcome nonetheless. It was amazing how much difference just having someone to talk with made. It still wasn’t _easy_, but it was _easier_, and honestly? That was enough.

He’d made another attempt at the league a year later. Even though he technically didn’t need to go through the other gyms again, he did anyways. It was a whole new attempt for a whole new Surge, afterall. So he played it up, spouting cheesy one-liners from old action movies, and generally having _fun_ with the whole thing. He even started calling himself Lieutenant, playing up every stereotype his time in the army had drilled into his head. Even _Raichu_ got into the act after a while.

Soon enough, he’d found himself back at the Saffron City gym. As he stood before Sabrina, rattling off some cheesy spiel about truth, justice, and the American way, he felt _happy_ for the first time in a long time. But even that wasn’t as surprising as what came next. Because after he wrapped up his speech and readied a Pokéball, the normally-emotionless psychic _broke out into a grin_.

“Don’t think I’ll take it easy on you, Surge,” she’d teased as a green aura burst from her right hand. With a slight tip of her finger, a Pokéball enveloped in the same emerald-green field floated out from behind her. She smirked. “I am still a gym leader, after all.”

True-to-her word, she didn’t take it easy on him. In fact, he _still_ wasn’t able to beat her. But that time, he’d enjoyed _every_ _second_ of it. And he had a hunch that so had she.

He looked at the canvas again. He was close now. Very close. All that was left for this piece was to paint the skyscrapers’ reflections onto the water.

Ultimately, he recovered. A new gym position had opened up in a town near his house, and they were holding auditions for it. With _his_ performance, it really wasn’t even a contest. The theatrics of the role were his specialty.

Something still bothered him about that day, though. He swore that he’d seen someone in the line watching his audition that looked _just_ like him. If he had, though, they must’ve slipped out when he wasn’t looking, because he never found them. Just another one of the many weird circumstances that made up his life these days, he supposed.

With just a few more dabs of paint, he finished for the day. As he looked upon the product of his work, he felt a tinge of nostalgia. Rendered in bright, messy, fluorescent colors was a city-scape of light purple, brown, and black buildings dwarfed by the two parallel streaks of gray towering above them. The buildings cast blurs of black into the dark blue waters of the harbor, as the twilight purple sky signified the end of the day. Surge looked upon it fondly, reminiscing for a moment. Then he glanced at his clock and began to put away his art supplies. He’d let the canvas dry overnight – he needed to go get some sleep.

Tomorrow was a big day for the Lightning American, after all.


End file.
